Bologna when it was conquered by the Gauls took the name of Bononia. Under Charlemagne it became a free city and had for its device the equivalent of the word Liberty.
Bologna, the ancient city, proud in the middle ages and independent always, has ever been the cradle of disturbing factions, a revolutionary precursor of new ideas, and has been sold and sold again by first one Judas and then another.
Bologna is, taking its history, its present day prosperity and its still existing mediæval monuments into consideration, the most impressive and imposing of all the secondary cities of Italy, indeed in many of the things that impress the traveller it is ahead, far ahead, of Florence.
Paul Van Herle, a fifteenth century Dutchman, first called the city Bologna la Grassa because of the opulency of the good things of the table which might be had here. Its wines and its grapes are superlative, and its mortadella, or Bologna sausage, is, to many, a delicacy without an equal.
The Leaning Towers of Bologna
Bologna seems to have a specialty of leaning towers, though the school histories and geographies always use that of Pisa to illustrate those architectural curiosities. Their histories are very romantic, and the mere fact that they are out of perpendicular takes nothing away from their charm. The two leaning brick towers of Bologna’s Piazza di Porta Ravegnana, the Torri Asinelli and the Torri Gorisenda, the first nearly a hundred metres in height and the latter about half that height, are two of the most remarkable structures ever erected by the hand of man.